A group blog to promote discussion, debate and insight into the history, particularly religious, of America's founding. Any observations, questions, or comments relating to the blog's theme are welcomed.

Indeed, in 1724, when Franklin was just 18, he worked at a printing house in London where his co-workers’ diets were mostly liquid.

“The pressman at British printing houses thrived on a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint in the afternoon at about 6 o’clock and yet another when the day’s work was done,” Eighmey writes.

Franklin, meanwhile, drank only water at work — his colleagues called him a “Water-American” — and was able to lift and carry twice as much type as anyone else there.

So Franklin, in an early demonstration of the sort of supreme negotiating skills that would later help form our nation, persuaded his co-workers to drink less by arguing that the nutrition beer afforded them could be obtained by eating bread, which would make them more energetic for work.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

West’s failure to distinguish political philosophy from political
theory makes it too easy for him to dismiss competing interpretations of
the Founders’ work and its vulnerabilities. We who teach in the field
often elide the terms when we describe what we do to our colleagues in
political science, on the one hand, and to those in the departments of
philosophy on the other. But in speaking of the political theory of the
Founding, West dodges the question of its relation to the account of
natural rights and natural law in political philosophers such as Thomas
Hobbes and John Locke.

He uses Locke from time to time to clarify and elaborate the
Founders’ theory, as I say, but he backs away from him whenever the
Founders did not agree with his conclusions. This prompts one to wonder,
did the Founders pull back from logical implications they did not want
to face, or did they find Locke’s theory philosophically inadequate?

West can only refute the amalgam theory—the view that the Founders
drew on philosophically distinct and therefore philosophically
incompatible political philosophies or fundamental traditions—if he can
show that the Founders dismissed Locke for theoretical reasons, not just
to avoid facing the practical consequences his principles demanded (for
example, permitting divorce). The argument of Leo Strauss in the first
place, and his successors such as Harvey Mansfield and Thomas Pangle, is
that there are aspects of Locke’s political philosophy, not least its
deep indebtedness to Hobbes’ philosophy, that lead eventually but
inexorably to the materialist individualism and anomie of our current
predicament—in other words, toward a crisis of liberalism—and that
insofar as the Founders invited Locke into their homes and made his
theoretical framework their own, they risked undermining their
handiwork.

In short, if the Founding is Lockean, it is no amalgam, but it is
unstable, carrying with it untoward Lockean consequences. If it is only
partially Lockean, it might avoid the bad consequences, but would do so
by being less pure (by being amalgamated). To be less abstract: The
weakening of the family, enormous economic inequality, and maybe even
eventual recourse to executive predominance arguably follow from Lockean
political philosophy even if none of this is what the Founders had in
mind.

See also this comment which links to how West has responded to a similar criticism. A taste, quoting West:

“In regard to the decline of our current world… our world is the way it
is not because of the Founding, but something else that happened in the
last two hundred and some years… if you look at the history of western
countries in the 1960s, all of them went through the exact same
metamorphosis, almost at the same moment. And so, countries for example
like Germany and Britain, that have long had establishment of religion,
official churches and all the things that the Americans didn’t do all
had that exact same thing. There was immediate institution of no-fault
divorce throughout the world in the 1970s in almost every country,
immediate institution of barriers on employers in terms of their freedom
of contract with their employees. There was a complete collapse of
sexual mores throughout the Western world all at once, whether it was
New Zealand, Australia, Germany, England America.

This is not due to the Founding Fathers, I can assure you of that…
Nietzsche’s diagnosis of what’s wrong with us- that’s where you need to
go to understand our current situation. It’s a psychological malady that
is a profound indication of a deep dissatisfaction in the Western soul
now that it has gotten rid of God, now that it has gotten rid of nature,
and reason- it has gotten rid of all meaning in human life. It has put
us exactly in the situation.. Tocqueville worried about, where we’re
living in the present moment. That’s where we are, and that is not
something that the Founding Fathers can be blamed for, and I also agree
to some degree that is something the Founding Fathers can’t help us
solve, that’s something we’re going to have to solve ourselves.”

I
think it's absolutely true that this was an international phenomenon
that affected Western culture in general, not just America in
particular. Certain folks might operate with blinders and assume since
America isn't Europe, let's look for particular American villains to
blame -- Alfred Kinsey, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Abbie Hoffman, etc. --
and ignore Europe. The Straussians by the way don't do this and for good
reason. They understand the ideas came from continental Europe and
migrated their way to America.

I like their analysis much
more than that of those who fulminate against "cultural Marxism." But
at least they too understand that the "Frankfurt school" whom they blame
for cultural Marxism are Europeans whose thought (as well as some of
their people) came to America.

I don't think however,
what's quoted above from West adequately answers the claim he tries to refute. Here's why:
America was founded as a liberal democracy, arguably the first modern
one. Lockean ideas began in Great Britain; but GB still was no modern
liberal democracy if for no other reason than they still had a throne
(monarchy) and altar (state established church), things liberal
democracy were meant to if not abolish, defang.

By the 1960s all of the nations in Western Europe were, like America and
France, liberal democracies. Indeed, America and France influenced them
in becoming such. So yes, these nations are Lockean, because they followed America and France.
Yes, many of those nations, like Great Britain still had both monarchies
and state established churches as they do to this day. But they are
"defanged"; they are titular. As liberal democracies, they have to be.

But before these nations became liberal
democracies, those institutions were not titular. There is only one area
where Western state established churches and monarchies still have
power, and that's that they have money. And money is power.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Thomas Kidd's book on Ben Franklin's religion was one of Russell Moore's favorite books of 2017. Check out Moore's brief review here. A taste:

I’ve long said that the cultural Christianity around us often resembles
the religion of Benjamin Franklin rather than that of his friend and
contemporary George Whitefield. ...

... Kidd portrays a dying Franklin in a room with a painting of the Matthew
25 scene of Jesus dividing the sheep from the goats at his Judgment
Seat: “What was going on in Franklin’s mind, as he gazed at God
separating the saved and the damned? To the end, Franklin’s faith was
enigmatic. It was clear that by the end of his life, he affirmed God’s
Providence, and God’s future rewards and punishments. But after a
lifetime of questions…doubts still lingered. He had sought to live by a
code of Christian ethics. But had he fully lived up to them? The doctor
believed that those who enter heaven must do so by their virtue. But he
knew that the Calvinist questioners saw this as false hope. No one
merited salvation by their goodness, they said. They thought Franklin
was wrong. He thought they were wrong. And so, Franklin waited, with
ragged breathing, eyes fixed on the painting.”

Sunday, December 3, 2017

I don't think I've ever shared this quotation. There was a prevailing
zeitgeist of religious correctness that dissenters of the era bucked.
The "Athanasian" divines held that folks who didn't believe in among
other things the Trinity weren't "Christians" whatever they called
themselves.

Benjamin Rush, a Trinitarian Universalist, wasn't one of those religiously correct folks. His universalism made him a dissenter.

There
is a propensity in all sciences to simplify themselves and to ascribe
that to one which should be divided among many causes. For example, how
few sects honor Father, Son and Holy Ghost in religion as they should
do. The Socinians honor the Father only; the Catholics the Saviour
chiefly, and the Quakers the Holy Spirit above both; how few include all
the ends of our Saviour's death in their belief of the Atonement; each
contends for one end only while six or seven other ends are clearly
revealed in the Scriptures; many exalt one power or one set of powers
only in the mind instead of all, many confine religion to one power only
instead of applying it to all. The Episcopalians to the understanding,
the Methodists to the passions and the Quakers the moral powers.

Socinians,
Catholics and Quakers each were controversial in their own right. That
Rush includes Socinians as a "Christian" sect demonstrates his sympathy
with the dissenters and against the orthodox forces of religious
correctness that would deny them such label.

Among
the many congratulatory letters George Washington received after
assuming the presidency was one from “the Convention of the Universal
Church, assembled in Philadelphia.” “SIR,” it began, “Permit us, in the
name of the society which we represent, to concur in the numerous
congratulations which have been offered to you.” The letter reassured
the president that “the peculiar doctrine which we hold, is not less
friendly to the order and happiness of society, than it is essential to
the perfection of the Deity.” One of its signers, Universalist minister
John Murray, had known Washington since serving as a chaplain in the
Revolutionary War. The minister and his second wife, Judith Sargent
Murray, had even stopped to dine with the Washingtons on their way to
the Convention. Thanks in large part to their efforts, universal
salvation was no longer an obscure creed espoused by a scattered few.
Now the Convention sought to establish Universalism as a recognized,
socially responsible faith.

Washington responded
favorably. “GENTLEMEN,” he began, thanking them for their well-wishes,
“It gives me the most sensible pleasure to find, that in our nation,
however different are the sentiments of citizens on religious doctrines,
they generally concur in one thing: for their political professions and
practices, are almost universally friendly to the order and happiness
of our civil institutions. I am also happy in finding this disposition particularly evinced
by your society.” Such affirmation of the Universalists’ civic
friendliness, from none other than the first president of the newly
United States, must have gratified the Convention. They were well aware
that other Protestant clergy, especially the Calvinists, disdained their
“peculiar doctrine.”

By the time he was elected the nation’s third president in 1801, the Founding Father had become a champion of separation of church and state. His Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a precursor to First Amendment safeguards on religious freedom in the Constitution, passed the state’s general assembly in January 1786. When campaigning for president, Jefferson was berated by his opponents for being “anti-Christian” and “an infidel.” Once in office, Jefferson hosted what is believed to be the White House’s first iftar — the sunset meal to break daily fasts during Ramadan — in 1805.

Jefferson kept his own religious views private. But he always wrestled with the veracity of the New Testament. That’s when his penknife came in handy.

Jefferson believed that in order to glean the most from the New Testament, Jesus’s moral teachings needed to be separated from the miracles in the Gospels that he found suspect. He ordered six volumes — in English, French, Latin and Greek — and took a blade to their thin pages, rearranging Jesus’s teachings in chronological order and cutting out what he saw as embellishments that he didn’t believe. He felt those core teachings provided “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

Jefferson pasted his preserved passages on blank sheets of paper and sent the scrapbook off to a book binder. In 1820, when Jefferson was 77 years old, the small, red volume of roughly 80 pages was complete.

Friday, November 17, 2017

At
Dr. Finley’s school, I was more fully instructed in those principles by
means of the Westminster catechism. I retained them without any
affection for them until about the year 1780. I then read for the first
time Fletcher’s controversy with the Calvinists, in favor of the
universality of the atonement. This prepared my mind to admit the
doctrine of universal salvation, which was then preached in our city by
the Rev. Mr. Winchester. It embraced and reconciled my ancient
Calvinistical and my newly adopted Arminian principles. From that time I
have never doubted upon the subject of the salvation of all men. My
conviction of the truth of this doctrine was derived from reading the
works of Stonehouse, Seigvolk, White, Chauncey and Winchester, and
afterwards from an attentive perusal of the Scriptures. I always
admitted with each of those authors future punishment, and of long
duration.

Curiously, one name missing from Rush's
list is that of the other most notable Universalist of America's
Founding era, John Murray. The article sheds light on why that might be
so [it relates to Murray's denial of temporary punishment in the
afterlife]:

During the Revolutionary Era and Early
Republic, the two leading universalists in America were Winchester and
John Murray; the latter was a onetime friend of George Whitefield who
eventually came to embrace the universalist views of a Welsh minister
named James Relly. Both Relly and Murray had been pro-revival Calvinists
prior to their conversion to universalist sentiments. In 1770, Murray
relocated to America and spent the next forty-five years promoting the
universalist cause from Virginia to New England. Murray met Winchester
shortly after First Baptist Church of Philadelphia split over
Winchester’s views. The two men became friendly acquaintances, and on
August 5, 1785 Murray and Winchester founded a Universalist Society in
Oxford, Massachusetts. ...

Though the
two men were co-laborers for the universalist cause in the mid-1780s,
they represented two distinct versions of universal restoration.42
Following Relly, Murray argued for what might be called a Calvinistic
version of universalism that affirmed unconditional election and
effectual atonement, but applied them to all of humanity. Murray argued
that all people are presently reconciled with Christ, even if they do
not know it, and are thus ushered into Christ’s presence upon their
death. For Murray, conversion was about awakening to the reality that
you are already saved; Christians are those who simply live in light of
that reality.43 Murray denied that there would be any punishment for sin
in the afterlife, believing that sin is punished temporally in the
present life; this emphasis on temporal punishment marked a key
difference between Murray and Winchester.

Winchester
advocated a different understanding of universal restoration. James Leo
Garrett argues Winchester built his cases for universalism around three
key ideas: God’s love is his central attribute, Christ’s atonement is
general in its provision, and salvation is inclusive of all people.45
Unlike Murray, Winchester argued for the necessity of post-
mortem punishment as a means to reform unrepentant sinners and reconcile
them to God. Eventually, all people would
be purged of their sin and be saved. For Winchester, conversion was
about resting in the saving work of Christ in this life and avoiding
God’s just punishment of sinners in the next life.46 Though a
universalist, Elhanan Winchester was in every other respect a mainstream
evangelical.

I think that Winchester's view of "future
punishment, and of long duration" probably predominated among then
Universalists. However, one still can't discount Murray's influence
during the American Founding. In 1775, George Washington defended Murray as a chaplain
during the revolutionary war when the "religiously correct" sought to
disqualify Murray for the position because of his universalism.

Later, in 1790, responding to a letter co-written by Murray, Washington gave his props to the Convention of the Universal Church.
Though I don't think this group privileged Murray's view of the
afterlife over Winchester's (Winchester also, apparently played a
leadership role in that group).

Still,
one thing about Murray's view reported above, to me, sticks out as
striking a very important note that resonates with classical and
Christian thought of yesterday and today: "believing that sin is punished temporally in the present life[.]"

Of
that era, most Unitarans, Universalists, Deists and so on, along with
Jews, orthodox Christians and Muslims believed in at the very least the
doctrine of an overriding Providence and future state of rewards and
punishments. While Murray's view is consistent with Providence and a
future state of rewards, what about the punishment part? Yes, there is
punishment for sin, or for the more philosophically minded, violation of
the natural law. But to Murray, it's more of a present punishment than a
future one.

This is Aristotle's notion of Eudaimonia, that there is, as George Washington put it in his First Inaugural "an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness." Perhaps this explains why Washington could venerate Murray's theology.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Robert G. Brown is, apparently a professor of physics at Duke University. He also has an interest in theology and has written on the Natives' "Great Spirit"
whom, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison invoked by name when speaking to the Natives and referencing
God.

A taste:

The Great Spirit (Wakan Tanka, Gitchi Manitou of Native
American cultures) is a beautiful example of a non-theistic belief in an
active, personal, non-anthropomorphic Deity that is intertwined with the
fabric of the Universe itself on the large scale and yet is personally
engaged with the web of living things and the world on an earthly scale.
These cultures are not completely homogeneous, and there are a variety
of creation mythologies that need not concern us as (in my opinion at
least) these cultures have always been aware that their mythologies are myths, that their legends are legends, that their sacred
stories are stories, and thus they have avoided the curse of
socially enforced orthodoxy or any sort of insistence on ``belief''.
The myths themselves are intended and used as teaching stories that
guide individual behavior in ways that support the individual and the
community, not as metaphysical speculation. These religions also seem
to lack the hellfire and damnation meme - the Great Spirit doesn't
punish people for being bad, doesn't inflict eternal torment on people
for ``not believing in It''. In these cultures, a life out of balance
with the Great Spirit, with the earth, with the community is its own punishment.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Read about it in the New York Times here. Richard Brookhiser reviews Gordon Wood's new book on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. A taste:

Silence fell between the two men. Abigail sent Jefferson a letter of
condolence after the death of his daughter Polly in 1804, but their
tentative correspondence almost immediately went nuclear. Friendship was
finally restored through the efforts of Benjamin Rush, a colleague from
the Continental Congress, who conducted a two-year campaign of
exhortation, flattery and guile. Among Rush’s stratagems was telling
Adams that he had had a dream in which Adams broke the ice by writing
Jefferson. Adams finally did so on New Year’s Day, 1812. Enemies no
more, the two corresponded until the end.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Christ Church Episcopal in Alexandria, Virginia is removing plaques to George Washington and Robert E. Lee because they apparently make some people feel "unsafe" and "unwelcome." While it's debatable whether a church should have a plaque or statue to any person, other than Christ, in its sanctuary, the reasons given for this change are driven not by a desire to enhance worship but rather by political correctness.

George Washington was one of the key founders of Christ Church Episcopal, and both his family and the Lee family had close ties to Christ Church. Accordingly, it seemed appropriate to earlier generations of Christ Church parishioners to honor both men. Not so today. And while I can understand people objecting to a plaque honoring Lee, I have no respect for any such objection to honoring the father of our country.

For more of my thoughts on this, I invite you to check out the following article at my blog...

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Legal positivists who are on the Left, the Right, in the Center and
libertarian don't believe in a "brooding omnipresence in the sky" at
least not for purposes of constitutional interpretation.

The
late Justice Scalia was one of these legal positivists. He was a devout
Roman Catholic who personally believed in what his Church taught: the
natural law of the Aristotlean-Thomistic tradition. His point was if
legislatures wish to use that to inform their conscience when drafting
and voting for legislation they are free to do so. Just as they are free
to use the the Bible, Book of Mormon, the works of Immanuel Kant or
whatever they wish.

I can't resolve the debate between
the legal positivists and those who believe that a higher organic law
undergirds our system and can be used in constitutional interpretation.
Legal positivism predominates. I do believe that the reason why some
very distinguished scholars dissent and believe in natural law and rights is that
quotations abound from America's Founders demonstrating that they
believed in the existence of such.

Christian
nationalists think that it's Christianity that is the source of this
higher law. After years of studying this, I don't think that's right.
Though God does have a place in documents like the Declaration of
Independence and Alexander Hamilton's "The Farmer Refuted,"
which are among the sources of the aforementioned quotations by
America's Founders on their belief in the existence of the "brooding
omnipresence in the sky."

We can add William Livingston's name
to the list of Founders who denied that Christianity was the source of
the omnipresence. Livingston was a framer of the US Constitution and
played a key role in getting the document ratified in New Jersey.

The denial of Christianity as the organic law of America comes from Livingston as he commented on the Articles of Confederation. The Articles do invoke "the Great Governor of the World," but that wasn't good enough for John Mason who wanted language that the "law of the eternal God, as contained in the sacred Scriptures, of the
Old and New Testament, [is] the supreme law of the United States,..."

That
language is also absent from the US Constitution. In fact the US
Constitution, unlike the Articles, is Godless. Below is from Livingston's letter to John Mason, Princeton, 29th May, 1778:

And to have made the 'law of the eternal God, as contained in the
sacred Scriptures, of the Old and New Testament, the supreme law of the
United States,' would, I conceive, have laid the foundation of endless
altercation and dispute, as the very first question that would have
arisen upon that article would be, whether we were bound by the
ceremonial as well as the moral law, delivered by Moses to the people of
Israel. Should we confine ourselves to the law of God, as contained in
the Scriptures of the New Testament (which is undoubtedly obligatory
upon all Christians), there would still have been endless disputes about
the construction of the of these laws. Shall the meaning be ascertained
by every individual for himself, or by public authority? If the first,
all human laws respecting the subject are merely nugatory; if the
latter, government must assume the detestable power of Henry the Eighth,
and enforce their own interpretations with pains and penalties.

[...]

[A]nd the inseparable connexion between the morals of the people and the
good of society will compel them to pay due attention to external
regularity and decorum; but true piety again has never been agreed upon
by mankind, and I should not be willing that any human tribunal should
settle its definition for me.

Post Script: For the full, easily accessible version of Livingston's letter, see here.

There are too many points for me to address in a brief blog post; so I will choose to focus on one by Professor Deneen:

... Indeed, inasmuch as for Locke the first form of property is ownership
of our own selves, protection of expression of selfhood is a
predictable form of how our “diversity in faculties” is likely to find
expression. And, as his 1792 essay
on property makes clear, Madison’s understanding of property as
exclusive possessions of individuals, which includes not only external
wealth but also opinions and belief, is extensively the same as the
Lockean view.

Reilly claims that Locke and Madison—in distinction from Hobbes and
Machiavelli—are part of a continuous tradition that reaches back to
ancient and Christian philosophy. However, one would be hard-pressed to
find a justification of res publica from pre-modern thinkers
that rests on the claim that protection of private differences is the
“first object” of republican government. The classical
tradition—expressed, for instance, in the writings of Aristotle or
Aquinas—encouraged public-spiritedness, self-rule, concern for the
common good, and cultivation of virtue as the essential elements of a
polity or republic. While classical thinkers also recognized differences
(and the potential for factions) as a major challenge, they commended
the harmonization of differences and cultivation of virtue rather than
promoting pursuit of private differences as the best avenue of avoiding
political division. Indeed, the ancient Greeks reserved the word idiotes to
those mainly concerned with private things. Classical thinkers
encouraged the formation of small-scale regimes over large ones as more
likely to promote participation in a shared common good. Aristotle
argued for a limit to acquisition, believing that excess was as
dangerous to civic and personal virtue as deficiency.

In calling for a large and extended republic, a relatively small
political class whose ambition would promote national greatness, and a
citizenry with a main focus on private pursuits, both Madison and
Hamilton were cognizant that they were building a nation based on a new
science of politics, as Hamilton readily acknowledges in Federalist 1 and 9.

I
agree with Deneen that Madison, Hamilton, following Locke were positing
something "new" that broke with the "classical" tradition that traces
from Aristotle, whom America's Founders lauded, to Aquinas, whom they
didn't.

However, the Lockean liberal tradition was
one of a number of different core ideologies that made up the the
synthesis of the origins of the American founding. Perhaps the "civic
republican" ideological thought found in such thinkers as Harrington
resonates more with the classical tradition from which Locke and Madison
broke and adds balance to the perspective, especially to those who laud the classical tradition and wish to find more of it in the American founding.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

I saw John Fealink this
a little while back. I think the term to describe the political
theology of the American Founding is as problematic as any other
competing ones. To hear George Washington tell the narrative, yes Jews
and Christians worshipped the same God. But so too did Muslims and
unconverted "Great Spirit" worshipping native Americans.

A taste:

The inclination to incorporate Jewish thought into the fabric of society
is noble and important, especially in light of political history. But
some scholars point out that “Judeo-Christian,” unlike the term
“Abrahamic,” can also serve to exclude
other religious minorities, such as Muslims — which can have unwelcome
implications. The term “Abrahamic” is more inclusive because all three
major monotheistic religions trace their lineage to the figure of
Abraham.

Personally I think "generic monotheism" gets
at the political theology of the American Founding. But if the "generic"
part makes it too weak, Dennis Prager's "ethical monotheism" will do.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

But even if the Founders discussed above were all clearly deists,
what would that say about the founding generation? Consider for a moment
the background and experiences of these men. Washington, Jefferson, and
Madison were wealthy Anglican plantation owners. Hamilton was born and
raised in the British West Indies, and Paine was born and raised in
England. In an era when few people travelled internationally, Jefferson
and Adams spent significant time in Europe, and Franklin lived most of
the last thirty-five years of his life in Britain and France. Needless
to say, these men are not representative of late-eighteenth-century
Americans.

When one turns from these few select Founders to the broader
constellation of men and women who played significant roles in winning
American independence and creating America’s constitutional order, the
proposition that the Founders were deists becomes impossible to
maintain. ...

Hall does solid work. Though no one's
scholarship is perfect. But to (admittedly) "nitpick," Hall then lists a
bunch of "orthodox Christians" that outnumber the "deists." He includes
Abigail Adams in his list of orthodox Christians. She wasn't. She just
as militantly rejected the Trinity as did her husband.

... The text of the unamended Constitution is notably
secular, save for references like the “Year of our Lord” 1787. But the
lack of religion in the document does not mean the topic went
unmentioned.

Several weeks into the proceedings, the octogenarian
Benjamin Franklin proposed that the meetings open with prayer. “How has
it happened,” he pondered, according to a copy of the speech in
Franklin’s papers, “that we have not, hitherto once thought of humbly
applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our Understandings?”

We've
heard the story and seen the quotation from Franklin at the
Constitutional Convention many times. They were deadlocked and Franklin
suggested that they pray. He did so using language that suggested belief
in an active personal God.

So I often see Christian nationalists framing the issue as though, "see even the supposed 'deist' Ben Franklin was prayerful."

But
here is the funny thing. We are assuming Franklin is the less than
fully orthodox outlier, as the Christian nationalists narrative
suggests he was the least conventionally religious man in a room full of
devoutly orthodox Christian men who were writing a Constitution based on
biblical principles.

So look at what Franklin wrote about the men in this room. From Kidd's article:

Even stranger, few convention attendees supported the proposal. A couple
of devout delegates seconded his motion, but it fizzled among the other
participants. Franklin scribbled a note at the bottom of his prayer
speech lamenting, “The Convention except three or four Persons, thought
Prayers unnecessary!”

As noted above the
Constitution's text is secular. Likewise the proceedings of the
Constitutional Convention quote the Bible little if at all for the
propositions contained in the Constitution.

And what does
it say about a room full of mostly, or with a few exceptions, "orthodox
Christian" men that they thought prayers unnecessary to resolve their
deadlock?

Saturday, September 30, 2017

So I never inquired before on quotations from Ben Franklin on the Ten
Commandments. After a little research I can only find one.
Interestingly, American Creation's Tom Van Dyke's 2009
post came up in my search which aptly noted that the context of the
quotation was Franklin acting the part of a "dirty old man."

People
commonly speak of Ten Commandments. I have been taught that there are
twelve. The first was increase & multiply & replenish the earth.
The twelfth is, A new Commandment I give unto you, that you love one
another. It seems to me that they are a little misplaced, And that the
last should have been the first.

Chris Rodda's "Liars for Jesus" (Volume I)
also references this quotation on page 423. She notes that Christian
Nationalists who look for and cherry pick quotations to fit their
narrative don't use this one.

Interestingly, I also found
in Rodda's chapter on Franklin (11 in her book) a letter that deals
with the Deism controversy. Franklin admitted that he was a "thorough
Deist" when younger but soon abandoned that creed. In 1728,
in his early 20s, Franklin thought the God of the Universe was a
Deistic, impersonal Creator who created a personal God that rules our
solar system, one he would worship.

By the end of his
life, I doubt Franklin continued to believe this. Where he ended up was
belief in an active personal God but without endorsing any orthodox
doctrine. Rather, the doctrine he did endorse was morality and doing
good to our fellow man as the central purpose of all valid religions. And that
Jesus -- about whose divinity Franklin had "doubts" -- was the greatest
moral teacher.

I
see with you that our affairs are not well managed by our
rulers here below; I wish I could believe with you, that
they are well attended to by those above; I rather suspect, from
certain circumstances, that though the general government of the
universe is well administered, our particular little affairs are
perhaps below notice, and left to take the chance of human prudence
or imprudence, as either may happen to be uppermost. It is,
however, an uncomfortable thought, and I leave it.

Well
America won the then brewing revolutionary war that was the subject of
Franklin's 1769 letter to Whitefield. Franklin's speech as an old man at
the Constitutional Convention reveals belief in a Providence who more
actively personally intervenes in man's affairs.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Most American founders regarded the Bible as a great handbook for nurturing morality and ethics; and even many who doubted the Bible’s divine origins appealed to Scripture. To be sure, the founders drew on and synthesized diverse intellectual traditions. Among them were British constitutionalism, Enlightenment liberalism, and classical and civic republicanism.

But the Bible was the most accessible, authoritative, and venerated text in 18th Century America. It was, by far, the most cited work in the political discourse of the age, referenced more frequently than the great political theorists John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu. The Constitution, as well as two dozen or so state constitutions framed in the wake of independence, was shaped by a legal culture and constitutional tradition influenced by Christianity and its sacred text. This includes measures separating and checking government powers in the hands of “fallen” public officials, mandating oaths of offices, and prohibiting double jeopardy.

...the Bible may have influenced some specific provisions written into the U.S. Constitution. To be sure, it is difficult to establish definitively that a specific constitutional provision was taken from a specific biblical passage; rather, it is more plausible that constitutional principles were indirectly influenced by biblical concepts that had long before found expression in western legal tradition, especially in the English common law, and, more recently, colonial laws.

Consider, for example, Article I, § 7, cl. 2 excepting Sundays from the 10 days within which a president must veto a bill. This is an implicit recognition of the Christian Sabbath, commemorating the Creator’s sanctification of the seventh day for rest (Genesis 2:1-3), the fourth commandment that the Sabbath be kept free from secular defilement (Exodus 20:8-11), and, in the Christian tradition, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

For one final example, the Fifth Amendment, crafted by the first federal Congress, prohibits double jeopardy, or trying a defendant twice for the same offense, which Saint Jerome in a late fourth-century commentary and legal scholars ever since have said was a principle found in the book of the prophet Nahum 1:9.

Legal commentators have pointed to additional examples of the Bible’s influence on specific constitutional provisions, including provisions on cruel and unusual punishment, the number of witnesses required in cases of treason, affirmation in the alternative to an oath, and corruption of blood.

Although the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 readily conceded that the document they wrote was imperfect, there was a consensus that it was the best that could be framed under the circumstances. And some, such as Benjamin Rush, “believed the hand of God was employed in this work,” just as surely as “God had divided the Red Sea to give a passage to the children of Israel.”

Even the skeptic Benjamin Franklin, while disclaiming that the Convention’s work was “divinely inspired,” remarked that he could not conceive such a momentous achievement as framing “the new federal constitution” without it “being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent Ruler.”

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Roy Masters presents himself as a Messianic Jew and a Bible believing
Christian. He's not a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, which I
suppose makes him Protestant by default. Masters is a "new" teacher in
the sense that he innovated a certain theological understanding and
attained a group of people who follow his comprehensive teachings.

He
does not, however, wish to be seen as "New Age," or as a "cult leader."
Rather, he asserts he falls squarely within the "Judeo-Christian"
tradition. His comprehensive packaging of his theological teaching is
indeed novel. However, I would argue the vast majority of the components
of his teachings can be traced to earlier traditions in Christendom,
many of them "dissenting" or "eccentric" traditions.

So here is what he believes, or claims to believe:

1. The God of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

On
matters of biblical canon, I think he follows the Protestant canon
(book of 66) with questions as to whether the Song of Solomon is
inspired. If that book is, he rejects the sexualized reading of it. He
may well believe some of books rejected by Catholic, Orthodox and
Protestant traditions are inspired. I saw him quote the Gospel of Thomas
in one of his lectures as though it were inspired. That may make him
some kind of Gnostic (sorry Eric Vogelin fans).

2. The mystical tradition of Christianity.

I don't know whether there is a connection between Gnosticism and Christian mysticism. But Roy Masters' devotee David Kupelian explicitly notes that tradition as authoritative:

Then there’s the famous 16th century
Catholic priest, Saint John of the Cross, who authored the Christian
classic “Dark Night of the Soul” and others. He said this: “Love
consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and
in suffering for the Beloved” (that is, for God). And this: “If you
purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will
understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you
will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.” This is a
mystery. We spend our lives coveting and acquiring the possessions and
relationships we think will make us happy. And here we’re being told
that to find true happiness, we must somehow forsake these very desires.
How? And more importantly, why?

By the way, for his efforts at religious reform, John was
imprisoned by religious authorities and flogged publicly every week,
only to be returned to isolation in a tiny cell barely large enough for
his body.

And what about Jean Guyon, the 17th century French author of
many Christian books including “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus
Christ”? She gently nudges believers in the direction of “retreating
inward, and seeking after tranquility of mind” in order to do all things
“as in the Divine presence.”

3. A view of "the God within" and revelation that is like what old school Quakers taught.

This
may also parallel the above mentioned non-Quaker mystical tradition of
Christianity. It's about being still and listening to your conscience in
order to channel and truly understand revelation from God. Those
Quakers were the group who focused most seriously on the 3rd Person in
the Trinity -- the Holy Spirit -- as God who gets inside of man and
speaks directly to him. Without it, no one will ever truly understand
what the Bible means and how to properly put it together. It will just
be citing verses and chapter of word blather.

Likewise
Masters, after these Quakers teaches the Bible is NOT the "word OF God,"
rather the "word FROM God." True revelation is wordless! It's a
wordless word that one receives in a state of stillness. Then, after
channeling this "understanding," we do our best to put it into the
imperfect words of language. The understanding precedes the language
words.

Nevertheless, because [the Scriptures] are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the
fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and
knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Yet because they give a true
and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule,
subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty: for as by the
inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify, that the Spirit is that
Guide by which the saints are led into all Truth; therefore, according to the Scriptures, the Spirit
is the first and principal leader.a Seeing then that we do therefore receive and believe the Scriptures
because they proceeded from the Spirit, for the very same reason is the Spirit more originally and
principally the rule, according to that received maxim in the schools,
Propter quod unumquodque est tale, illud ipsum est magis tale: That for which a thing is
such, that thing itself is more such.

Yes, the
"fountain" is the truth; the scriptures are not "the fountain," but
rather a declaration of the "fountain." As we will see below, Roy
Masters doesn't believe in the Trinity; but he does believe in the
Divine. When I first read the above quoted passage by Barclay it
reminded me of what Masters teaches. The divine within precedes the
written Word and is instructive. Because the scriptures testify
to that primary wordless fountain of truth, that is what justifies the
words of scripture as valid and true. Not vice versa. Don't put the cart
before the horse. The scriptures are the cart, not the horse.

(Before
the Internet was invented Masters once noted "Bibles" are just books of
paper, the inherent quality of which is no greater than toilet paper,
fit to wipe your ass with. It's not the paper; it's not the print that
is holy.)

4. Arianism

Masters
does not believe Jesus is God, but rather the Son of God. The Son of God
is NOT God the Son. Jesus was there "In the Beginning," (first born of
creation). And Jesus is the "Word of God." But English
translations improperly state that the Word OF God "was" God. Rather,
like Scripture itself, the "Word of God" (Jesus) was "from God," not God
Himself. So John 1:1 should be translated as saying "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was FROM God."

5. The Holiness Doctrine

This
is something that Masters has gotten a lot of flack for. The media has
said he claims to be "sinless." No. He claims rather that he DOES NOT
SIN. But he used to before he was saved (as the Bible says no human
except Jesus is "without sin"). This is exactly what evangelical
revivalist Charles Finney posited. And Matthew 5:48 and I John 3:8-10 are the scriptural justifications for the doctrine.

6. An Augustinian View of Sex.

Masters believes, after Augustine,
celibacy and chastity are the ideal. I'm no expert in Augustine and
Masters' teachings here are a bit difficult to understand, but I try.
Masters thinks that the "begetting"of the human species is somehow
mysteriously tied to the fall of man. Sex is only appropriate between a
married husband and wife. But even there it falls short of the ideal.
Orthodox Protestants believe, if you are married most anything goes,
even contraception. Catholics believe if you are married, as long as the
sex is Thomistic, anything goes. Masters believes it's immoral for a
man to be addicted to sex with his wife.

If
a man is addicted to sex with his wife, it's a sign of not being saved.
Indeed, if a young man is already saved, he, like Jesus and St. Paul,
wouldn't need to get married, because he would have, out of his
holiness, transcended his sexual desires. And part of the salvation
process is for a married man to transcend his sexual desire for his wife
and treat her like a father treats his daughter. (Similar to how Roman
Catholic dogma says men and woman who aren't married in the eyes of the
Church must live as "brother and sister" until they are. Masters uses
the "father/daughter" analogy).
Along the way,
while a man is getting saved, that's when children incidentally happen
in the context of marriage. Masters is almost 90 and has five children
and many grandchildren (and I think great grandchildren). Yet he brags
about how he hasn't had sex with his wife in I think around 50 (or more)
years.

7. Judeo-Christian meditation as essential for salvation.

This is where Masters gets accused of being "New Age" and or "Eastern." You can listen to the meditation exercise here.
There is no funny sounding mantra. However, it does sound like
something from the meditation/mindfulness movement, which has eastern
origins. The mindfulness way of life, I should add, also parallels
Stoicism, which is a Western philosophy.

Masters argues
his meditation is, unlike all the others, "Judeo-Christian" because it
anchors you to the God of the Bible. Sure there are seeming similarities
to Eastern teachings. But as the Stoic example demonstrates, sometimes
different cultures come to the same or similar conclusions through
different channels.

But the other meditation exercises are dangerous because they in a sense
"work" like his does, but without anchoring you to the God of the
Bible, which is what is special about his. Masters argues that being in a
state of stress -- fight or flight, anger or anxiety -- is less than
ideal, and signals an unsaved state. His meditation exercise supposedly
makes you immune to stress. You don't get angry or experience anxiety,
no matter what happens.

Buddhism and other Eastern meditation exercises also promise something
similar. But the difference is, by being anchored to the God of the
Bible, the meditator will not sin. On the other hand, the Eastern
meditator are anchored to nothing. So they can get immune to anger and
fear, but go on sinning with a big grin on their face, like the Cheshire
Cat.

A psychopath is someone who can do wrong without a sense of guilt.
It's the difference between a stressed out angry compulsive person who
does harm and feels guilt (not a psychopath) and someone in a calm and
blissful state who can stick a knife in an innocent person and sleep
peacefully that night (a psychopath).

Indeed, Buddhist monks score high on the psychopathy index.
It doesn't mean they are horrible people. Rather that they are calm and
peaceful. So if they did choose to do wrong, they would feel peaceful
about it. No guilt. Their meditation helps to anesthetize real and
necessary guilt feelings. Masters claims his helps men to stop sinning and once they
cease sinning entirely, they feel no guilt because there is nothing to
feel guilty about.
There is a lot more to Mr. Masters' teachings, but I think the above
captures 7 key points. I don't necessarily agree with everything he
says. Rather I view him like Immanuel Kant viewed Emanuel Swedenborg.
Kant had a love/hate fascination with Swedenborg.

But
as a civilized gentleman, I'm trying to be fair. One thing about Mr.
Masters' teachings that bother me is his theology is extremely
politicized. Public figures Jesse Lee Peterson and the above mentioned
David Kupelian are devotees. And they teach moral truth is on the side of
the political Right. The extreme socially conservative Right.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

A while ago, I introduced the notion into discussion forums populated by many evangelical Christians that the driving political theology of the American Founding, adhered to by certain "key Founders" -- leading lights, if you will -- was something halfway between Deism and orthodox Christianity. Some folks in these forums responded that such to them, sounded like a "cult." (Others simply wished to deny that what I reported was accurate.)

Indeed, certain evangelical-fundamentalist circles define "cult" by adherence to doctrines that are not "correct" as they understand what the Bible "really" means. In other words, if you are not "doctrinally correct," you risk the "cult" label.

But there has to be more than that, right? Arminians and Calvinists disagree with one another, sometimes call the other "heretics," but do they throw around the "cult" label in their accusations? (Not a rhetorical question, rather one I really don't know the answer to.)

It could be that orthodox Trinitarian doctrine -- something to which Arminians and Calvinists both adhere -- is the "safe ground" that avoids the cult label (but not necessarily the "heretic" label).

But I have heard evangelical-fundamentalist types term "Roman Catholicism" a cult. But Roman Catholicism adheres to orthodox Trinitarian doctrine! Protestant evangelical-fundamentalists disagree with one another here. Many, sensible in my opinion, evangelical-fundamentalists, though they may disagree with Roman Catholicism and indeed, fear its adherents are not really "saved," understand it's not proper to label such a "cult."

Why? In addition to endorsing orthodox Trinitarianism, Roman Catholicism also happens to be the largest Christian denomination in the world. And arguably the oldest. In other words, it's "normative," historic Christianity.

What then? In addition to being doctrinally incorrect -- especially on areas like the Trinity -- for a sect to be relatively new and relatively small, might help to establish its status as a "cult." This is why, in the above mentioned circles, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnessism, among other creeds, qualify as "cults."

I still don't see why any of these criteria make "cult" status negative or wrong compared to the religious traditions that don't necessarily qualify for "cult" status.

Is it because of issues of "control"? All religions to some degree seek to control the behavior of their adherents. That's supposed to be a feature, not a bug. Fallen humans are by nature out of control and bound to cause trouble. "Religion" is something that is supposed to, for the sake of society and civilization -- at least according to George Washington in his Farewell Address -- keep them in line and make them into moral and productive citizens.

With that, see below a 35 year old video from CNN's "Crossfire" featuring one Roy Masters. The show terms Masters a "cult leader." On social media, Masters -- still alive at almost 90 -- frames it as a matter of the corrupt "media" smearing him. Masters is very conservative and integrates his political leanings into his theology. As such, the "media" establishment who tend towards the Left and have institutional biases against the Right, have not been kind to him.

After Masters posted this old video, many followers on his site made the expected comments on how the Left media establishment were characteristically smearing him then as they do today.

But they missed one important dynamic. CNN's "Crossfire" was a show that featured someone from the Left, and someone from the Right. The person on the Left who antagonized Masters was the late Tom Braden. I don't know much about him, and just learned that apparently he was the real life inspiration for the Dad from "Eight is Enough." The person on the Right was the late John Lofton, who was far more "conservative" than Masters, arguably to the Right of Attila the Hun. Lofton was a member of RJ Rushdoony's "Christian Reconstructionist" movement that sought to impose harsh Old Testament style punishments in today's civil society.

These "uber-orthodox" Protestant fundamentalist Christians like
Lofton, as such, had no problem terming Masters -- who is not
"doctrinally correct" according to fundamentalist Protestant standards
-- a "cult leader." Lofton wrote, ironically, for the Rev. Moon owned "Washington
Times" until he was fired for being too conservative for them.

Lofton said of Masters that he is “a false prophet and theological fraud.” I write of this because some of Mr. Masters' social media followers apparently thought these were two members of the Liberal media trying to smear him as a "cult leader."

They couldn't be more wrong, at least as it relates to the late Mr. Lofton.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

I wear quite a few hats in San Angelo, and I love this community. I am writing this article as the retired executive director of Texas Baptists Committed and a longtime board member of The Interfaith Alliance in Washington, D.C.

David Barton is of course a GOP activist, heavily involved in questions of religion and government and usually in fierce opposition to the Democrats. [See The Great Texas Textbook Massacre.]

I do not question Currie's Christianity. But I do question his ethics. This lack of disclosure is inexcusable.

I'm also disgusted at Currie's attack in its misrepresentations of Barton's actual positions, as well as using the newspaper to urge fellow Christians to shun Barton. But let's just leave it here at Currie's ethics. This is political, and to pretend it's solely a Christian question is dishonest. And even if it were, on a Biblical level, completely inappropriate to take to the newspapers (see 1 Corinthians 6:1).

I wear quite a few hats in San Angelo,
and I love this community. I am writing this article as the retired
executive director of Texas Baptists Committed and a longtime board
member of The Interfaith Alliance in Washington, D.C.

I
am deeply dismayed that reputable organizations have invited David
Barton to speak to our community, because there is nothing reputable
about the message he will bring. His message – which he has been
proclaiming for over 25 years – is what I have fought against my entire
career as a minister committed to upholding the truths of the Bible and
as an American committed to the principles embedded in the U.S.
Constitution. I firmly believe that religious liberty, as defined by our
Founding Fathers, is the greatest single freedom ever adopted by a
government.

David Barton very effectively twists
the truth and presents quotes out of context and strategically selected
partial quotes. He presents partial, twisted truth as absolute truth.
The end result is a message that is an absolute lie – biblically,
historically and constitutionally.

Monday, September 4, 2017

“We must face the disturbing dilemma that modern liberal democracy
needs God, but God is not as liberal or as democratic as we would like
Him to be”-- Robert Kraynak
"Modern liberal democracy" as defined here relates to the notion that
men are by nature free and equal. That's the small l "liberal" part of
the equation. The "democratic" part means that political systems are
validated by the "consent of the governed." That voting and majorities
matter. Voting majorities often, but not always trump. Sometimes rights that are
antecedent to majority vote, trump.

When Kraynak
invokes "God," the God he invokes is generally that of orthodox
Christianity, more particularly that of Roman Catholicism.

Is
God so necessary as he asserts? A number of notable atheists have made
the case that God isn't a necessary part of the equation for the
objective, non-negotiable status of "rights" that are antecedent to
majority rule. Ayn Rand believed this. As does my blogfather, the
fervent atheist Timothy Sandefur.
Though not an expert, I understand that some more traditional natural
law philosophers have held God isn't necessary to prove the objective
binding reality of the natural law.

But God does serve
as a firm place to rest the principles. That's my position. Two notable
left of center public intellectuals and John Locke scholars, the late
Paul Sigmund and the currently living Jeremy Waldron, have argued for the
"liberal democracy needs God" part of Kraynak's above noted formula. That is,
you don't get universal human rights without God.

I have explored this issue for quite some time. See this link for what I have argued.
Again, it's my position that God functions as a necessary guarantor of
human rights in a clearer way than philosophy divorced from God does,
even though I am open to arguments that the latter can "work."

However, what I have long
stressed is that it's not any kind of traditional orthodox notion of God
that is necessary. That, to the contrary, as Kraynak above notes, the
more traditional notions of the deity, really aren't all that "liberal
democratic" (as that term is defined above).

It's not
my position that Thomas Jefferson spoke for all of even most of the
Founders. Rather, that his God "worked," indeed, worked perfectly in the
equation that makes God the necessary guarantor of liberal democratic
rights. And Jefferson's God was devoid of the following features:

The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the
world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible
ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity;
original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy,
&c.

It is also my position that the texts of
the Bible and orthodox doctrine qua orthodox doctrine do not speak to
unalienable rights that are doctrinally grounded in nature, discovered
by reason. There is a need for some kind of additional theory that is
largely outside of holy texts of revealed scripture, though certain
texts of revealed scripture can be used to incorporate such outside the
text teachings and doctrines.

As we know Dr. Gregg
Frazer has termed the political theology of the American Founding, hence
the political theology of "liberal democracy" as articulated in
America's Declaration of Independence, "theistic rationalism." That term,
no doubt has its inadequacies. But so too do most other terms that have
attempted to claim such ground. The Declaration of Independence is
hardly a "Christian" document. It doesn't mention Jesus or quote verses
and chapter of Scripture. Rather, what it does is mention a God of some
sort in four places (using the titles Creator, Nature's God, Divine
Providence and Supreme Judge of the World).

The term
"Judeo-Christian" is no better than Dr. Frazer's "theistic rationalism"
in its attempt to describe this political theology. That term is
unnecessarily exclusive. How does the henotheistic God of Mormonism
relate to "Judeo-Christianity"? Mormonism, unlike Judaism or orthodox
Christianity, because of when and where it was founded actually
incorporates the divine nature of America's Declaration and Constitution
into its official teachings and arguably makes for a more authentic
representation of the God of the American Founding than either
traditional Christianity or Judaism do.

Likewise with Islam. That religion too believes in One True God. Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has competing theories
in how it understand the natural law. Like Judaism and Christianity,
Islam has all sorts of competing varieties. I reject there is something
in the nature of Islam that makes it impossible to be compatible with
liberal democratic norms.

I do believe however, we can argue that Christianity is more
compatible with liberal democracy for a number of reasons (indeed,
Christendom, not Islam or Judaism birthed liberal democracy). I don't
believe Islam by its nature is any less compatible with liberal
democratic norms than is Judaism. And Judaism has found a way to
reconcile itself with liberal democracy.

I can
anticipate the objection by proof texting various Islamic holy texts and
teachings that would defy universalism that liberal democracy teaches. I
answer this by noting, after Larry Arnhart,
that likewise problematic verses and chapters exist in both the Old
Testament and the New. The New Testament is arguably more amenable to
such universalism. However, Christianity too has its sects that
problematically conflict with liberal democratic norms.

Think
of Calvinism with its teachings on Election and Limited Atonement. In
other words, if you are not of the Elect, then to Hell with you.
Calvinism contributed to liberal democratic theory by making a case for
"resistance" to higher powers under law. But on matters like free
exercise of religion, those same "good guy" Calvinist resisters like
Samuel Rutherford held it was just for John Calvin to have Michael
Servetus burned at the stake for heresy.

Yet, by the
time Calvinists Roger Sherman and John Witherspoon articulated their
politics, they managed to find a way to make their religious creed
compatible with late 18th Century American liberal democracy.

So
Islam's problem, in my opinion, is that it has not adequately revised
its understanding of the creed to make itself compatible with liberal democracy like even
traditional versions of Christianity and Judaism have.

What to make of all this?

If
we are going to come together and do our best to agree to a term that
invokes a political theology necessary to the equation of providing the firm foundation for liberal democratic rights, what should
it be?

There is no "right" answer. The best lowest
common denominator compromise answer I have seen is one that was offered
by Dennis Prager: "Ethical Monotheism." It's not as "mushy" as "generic
monotheism" (a term I think actually describes America's founding
political theology); it's not as problematically and erroneously
exclusive as "orthodox Christianity," "Christianity" or
"Judeo-Christianity." It's not quite as loaded as "theistic
rationalism." It's more accurate than either "Deism" or "Ceremonial
Deism." It includes within its ambit Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, the
varieties of orthodox Christianity, unorthodox Christianity, and Deism.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

This is an impassioned book about the Declaration of Independence. It
comes from specific personal and pedagogical experiences, as its
author, a classicist and political theorist at Princeton, winsomely
reports.

Danielle Allen employs several techniques, some old, some new, in
engaging and expositing her book’s central object: what she calls a
close, “sentence by sentence” reading of the document, one that
sometimes lingers over the meaning of a single term but that also draws
upon modern theories of the uses to which language can be put. But while
the methods are specific, the aim is quite grand and ambitious: to make
the Declaration “our Declaration,” with “us” being not just all
Americans, of whatever race or socioeconomic condition, but all
humanity.

The Declaration has stirred Allen mightily. She describe teaching it
as a transformative experience, and she has responded with all of her
being, as a scholar, a citizen, and a human being. This is engaged
scholarship in a fulsome sense.

Like many today, she wants her egalitarianism to rest on a secular
foundation. This, one suspects, is the deeper meaning of her oft-used
term, “commitment,” which is what human beings do when they cannot
affirm a principle on the basis of either faith or reason. Certainly,
the naturalistic egalitarian anthropology she teases out of the text is
more sketched than demonstrated, and with significant lacunae. For a
better treatment of the character of the deity affirmed in the
Declaration, one should consult Gregg L. Frazer’s The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders
(2012) and his useful concept of “theistic rationalism,” halfway
between Deism and 18th century Christian orthodoxy. Allen gets close,
but her manner of reading precludes her from considering, in a
comprehensive view, the Declaration’s teaching about the deity.

JI:The book’s argument is that the
American Revolution was the spark that created the expanding blaze that
transformed the Western world by setting the basic model – democratic
republicanism versus aristocratic republicanism- which shaped the early
stages of the French Revolution (before Robespierre’s tyranny) and all
the revolutionary movements of the Western world between 1782 (Geneva)
and 1848. The key argument is that democratic versus aristocratic
republicanism defines the inner logic of the American Revolution, and
Radical Enlightenment versus ‘moderate Enlightenment’provides the
ideological format, the ideas, that justify the two warring sides within
the American Revolution.

JF: Why do we need to read The Expanding Blaze?

JI: The book is needed to help better situate
the American Revolution than has been done in its world historical
context and especially in its general Enlightenment context.

WAS AMERICA FOUNDED AS A CHRISTIAN NATION? (Revised Edition, 2016)By John FeaWestminster John Knox Press, 324 pages

For tens of millions of Americans, there’s no need to pose the question
raised in the title of John Fea’s monograph. Most self-identified
evangelicals adamantly insist that it was, and humanists and political
progressives vigorously assert that the Founding Fathers intended that a
“wall” be erected between church and state. You might expect Fea to
side with evangelicals, given that he’s a believer and a professor at a
Christian school, Messiah College. He doesn’t. Nor does he cast his lot
with those who take the opposing view. As a historian, Fea sees nuances,
not nostrums. His is a take that, depending upon the openness of the
reader, will be seen as a rare middle view within a polarized nation, or
will induce outrage.
....

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Bayes’s first publication was a theological work, entitled Divine
Benevolence ([Bayes], 1731). Since no author appears on the title page
of the book, or anywhere else, it is sometimes considered to be of
doubtful authorship. For example, the National Union Catalog of the
United States ascribes authorship to Joshua Bayes. However, Thomas Bayes
was the author of this work. Bayes’s friend, Richard Price refers to
the book in his own work A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals
(Price, 1948, p. 248) and says that it was written by Thomas Bayes. In
Divine Benevolence Bayes was trying to answer the question of the
motivating source of God’s actions in the world.

The essay dealt with how to handle the problem of evil in the world. It is also believed that Bayes was an Arian.